Esther Pleads for Her People

1And the king came in, and Haman, to drink with Esther the queen. 2And the king said to Esther also on the second day at the feast of the wine, “What is your petition, Esther the queen? And it shall be given to you. And what is your request? As much as half of the kingdom, and it shall be done.”

3And Esther the queen answered and said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, O king, and if upon the king it is good, let my soul be given to me at my petition, and my people at my request; 4for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be exterminated. And if for menservants and for maidservants we had been sold, I would have kept silent, for the adversary is not equal in the damage of the king.”

5And King Ahasuerus spoke and he said to Esther the queen, “Who is he, this one? And where is this one—he who has filled his heart to do thus?”

6And Esther said, “A man, an adversary, and enemy is this, the evil Haman.”

And Haman was terrified from before the faces of the king and the queen.

The Hanging of Haman

7And the king arose in his anger from the feast of the wine to the garden of the palace, and Haman stood to beg for his soul from Esther the queen, for he saw that the evil was determined against him from the king.

8And the king returned from the garden of the palace to the house of the feast of the wine, and Haman was falling upon the couch that Esther was on. And the king said, “Is it also to subdue the queen with me in the house?”

The word went forth from the mouth of the king, and they covered the face of Haman.

9And Harbonah, one from the eunuchs, said before the face of the king, “Also behold, the tree that Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good over the king, is standing at the house of Haman, fifty cubits high.”†

And the king said, “Hang him on it.”

10And they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai, and the rage of the king subsided.